Biography

I have had the opportunity to teach over 9,000 brilliant Goizueta students in business law. It has been an amazing opportunity to introduce students to the potential and pitfalls of the law. It has been the gift of a lifetime to teach these incredible students! I
have also written so many letters of recommendation for my students, primarily law school, but also other graduate schools and programs. While I can never know what impact these hard-thought letters had; I can happily report that my students have had great success in their law school journeys.

Education

  • Juris Doctor
    Harvard Law School
  • BA (Hons)
    University of Tennessee - Knoxville

2023 Best Undergraduate Professors: Allison Burdette, Emory University Goizueta Business School

Poets&Quants
December 3, 2023
Allison Burdette, 59, is Professor in the Practice of Business Law at Emory University Goizueta Business School. She is a Goizueta Award for Leadership Recipient Honoree, a BBA Distinguished Educator, and Faculty-Project Leader of Emory’s Inaugural Arts and Social Justice Fellowship. Students have frequently called her out in Poets&Quants’ favorite professor features, and she is the winner of the 2014 Brit Katz Award – a university-wide award presented by Emory Student Programming Council at graduation.

Can Employers Require COVID Vaccinations?

FOX5 News at 4pm
September 8, 2021
But if you are employed by the public sector we're talking about in Georgia. Only the rules are different. And this, according to Allison Burdette, she's over at Emory University's Goizueta business school. In the state of Georgia right now, because of an executive order that the governor put out, public employers that would be the University of Georgia education system. Public school employees, they cannot be required to have a vaccine because of the executive order. Now other states view this differently and do allow public sector industries to require vaccination. Some federal employees are required to be vaccinated to be on the job, and that could include contract workers. And even if you're in a job where it's not required, they will be mask wearing and there will be stringent Covid testing required and you're going to see that in private sector to Walmart.

Black leadership, white old guard clash in a changing metro Atlanta city

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 12, 2021
Representation in hiring is something governments consider. Seeking diversity can, however, lead even well-meaning officials into tricky legal territory, said Allison Burdette, a professor at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act makes it unlawful to decline to hire someone on the basis of their race instead of qualifications. In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of white Connecticut firefighters who said they’d faced discrimination while seeking promotions. Burdette said the precedent has since made building a more representative workforce so fraught that consulting firms are often hired to ensure plans don’t run afoul of Title VII.

Magazine releases #GoizuetaKudos for Fall 2016

emorybusiness.com
December 1, 2016
Goizueta continued its tradition of hosting summer programs aimed at arming high-achieving college and high school students with the skills to succeed in business. This year Libby Egnor, assistant dean of the BBA program, coordinated the Goizueta Summer Business Institute (SBI), which included faculty members Allison Burdette, Ryan Hamilton, and Clifton Green. SBI welcomed 18 non-business students with a professional development course and an intensive academic experience that provides immersion into the functional areas of business while giving students the opportunity to prepare a pitch for a new business venture. For the high-school set, Professors Chip Frame and Earl Hill prepared an academic challenge for this year’s LEAD Global Business Institute for high-potential diverse students. The program, now in its second year, offered scholars exposure to a variety of business topics, issues, and functions.

Emory University 2007 Sustainability Innovators Award for Innovation in Faculty and Student Education and Research.

GOIZUETA MAGAZINE
During Emory’s Earth Week celebration, Allison Burdette, assistant professor in the practice of business law, received the Emory University 2007 Sustainability Innovators Award for Innovation in Faculty and Student Education and Research. She was honored for the dinner and discussion series she developed last year on global climate change. The first evening in the series addressed the science of global climate change and media response to it; the second examined the law and politics of global climate change. Forty students and faculty members participated. The series was so successful that it will continue this fall, when it will address global health and business issues.

A look at alumni in the business of sustainability

emorybusiness.com
December 14, 2014
There are many definitions, depending on who you ask and their focus, but I think it all boils down to The Brundtland Commission’s definition, which is “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” In my line of work, sustainability means making our buildings more efficient—whether that’s energy efficiency, water conservation, or materials and waste management—in order to reduce the building’s carbon footprint. It was actually Professor Allison Burdette who sparked my interest in this area. While I was not the most astute business law student, she knew I had interned and planned to pursue my career in real estate. She pushed me to take her B-Law 2 class, introduced me to LEED, and planted the seed of a very rewarding career for me.

Favorite Professors: Emory's Allison Burdette

Bloomberg
July 9, 2012
For every concept Allison Burdette teaches, there’s a story to accompany it. Embracing the “show, don’t tell” style, the associate professor in business law arrives to each of her classes at Emory’s Goizueta Business School early in order to draw on the whiteboard. “I’m not happy about the change,” she says. “I’m a chalkboard person.” Chalkboards may be outdated, but Burdette’s analogies are not: She draws pawnshops by hand, buys promissory notes on EBay, and tells stories of her great-great-grandfather in order to make subjects more relatable.

Making a difference in students’ lives

GOIZUETA MAGAZINE
On a Wednesday evening in mid-August, Emory BBA students and alumni packed PS450, a chic restaurant-lounge in New York’s Murray Hill section. The event, sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations and the BBA Career Management Office, promised casual networking, but that wasn’t the big draw. Instead they came to see Allison Burdette, an assistant professor in the practice of business law, who’s got a following that some rock bands would envy.

50 Best Undergraduate Business Professors of 2023

Yahoo! News
December 13, 2023
Asked to describe his first time teaching in one word, Corey Ciocchetti uses two: Comically exhilarating. The ethics professor had his very first class the morning after his honeymoon in Hawaii.

Black leadership, white old guard clash in a changing metro Atlanta city

AJC.com
March 12, 2021
Clayton County, home to the O’Hara family plantation in “Gone with the Wind,” used to be mostly white. But even as the county went majority-Black, by a lot, officials in Forest Park, the Clayton County city just south of the Atlanta city limits, remained mostly white until recent years.